


Virtues Carved in Flesh

by Iktsuarpok_Hiraeth



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Childhood Friends, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Stuttering, Unrequited Love, but pretty minor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-09-14 00:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16902453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iktsuarpok_Hiraeth/pseuds/Iktsuarpok_Hiraeth
Summary: Earl Harlan has learned many things through the years, lessons that burn as hard as metal and as soft as snakeskin.





	1. Patience (Part 1: Roger)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm reposting this from an old account, and debuting this new solo one! The tags will be updated/changed as I add more chapters. I'm so excited to post this, as well as to learn and grow as a writer.

Earl Harlan had always considered himself to be a patient man.

Of course, being patient was worth it for those he loved.

He had been there for his Roger, the light of his life.  
The speech therapy had been helping, sure, but every  
stutter  
slurred affectionate word  
and  
awkward phrase  
built up in a young, scrambled voice hadn’t yet been cured.  
The boy had been improving, yes, but the children were always so /cruel/.

Earl knew better than most, centering his life around the next generation of boys in Night Vale. The children didn’t /mean/ to be horrid (most of the time) and he was quite sure of that fact, but it didn’t take away the tears from his son’s eyes. It didn’t take away those sobs in the night he could hear from behind the closed door of the boy’s bedroom, and it would never take away the /fury/ that only a helpless father feels.

There was no way to force the others to be friends with a child unable to communicate.  
Not even a father could replace the days meant to be spent running with a platonic soulmate under the glowing desert sun.

Earl could only be patient.

After all, he was a very patient man.

He’d held his son through the worst of the tears, through the darker of the nights with hushed promises of the sun-lit future. How some children bloomed late in their childhood, how those few often grew to be the most beloved of all.

His child.  
Roger, pained and crying in his arms.

Lord have mercy on those who harmed his child, his baby boy.

But Earl was a patient man, and patient men only held tight to their children and supported them as well as they could. All he could do, helpless against a world of cruelty, was to provide what he could, to nourish the boy’s spirit before it went out entirely.

He could dream of knocking in the other’s parent’s teeth later, dispensing the proper punishment of those who raised their children to carry a spark of hate in their small hearts, to give birth to someone who’d find joy in crushing another’s spirit.

But Earl would have to bide his time, and the other parents would have to be culled another day.

He would wait, curled and ready, as all patient men did.


	2. Paitence (Part 2: Cecil)

Earl Harlan was a patient man.

But even then, he’d had to dig deep to handle Cecil.

Cecil.  
Where would he even begin to start?  
Maybe with the  
summer  
spring  
winter  
autumn  
nights spent together, curled under their waxed canvas tent.

They’d stolen the cheap fabric from behind the Ralph’s.

(Or, rather, they’d taken it from the lot where the dump truck took away any unwanted materials. Earl had tried to make Cecil see reason, but Cecil had insisted they term the action of taking garbage as “stealing”. It was more… adult.)

Earl had been content to leave the nutty brown parchment fabric plain, or at least to try and dye it in a camouflage pattern so that they’d be well hidden, but Cecil had been struck with inspiration.  
Stars.  
Big ones, little ones, all painted in the golden inks Cecil had saved dearly for to buy from the Saturday flea market. He’d bought others too, at Earl’s insistence that the night sky was beautiful precisely because of how many colors actually lived up there.

(He’d seen them all as he peered out from where he slept under the trailer home his Momma and Dad lived in. Moving out and living underneath it had been a hard decision, but Momma and Dad had been /very/ persuasive.)

Those night sky colors…

(Earl had been in shock when he’d first started living in his old tent under the trailer, but once the wetness in his eyes had dried, he’s been captivated… no, he’d been /enraptured/ by what he saw.)

Royal blues like the parts of the ocean we claim to love and pretend to fear, reds like the snap of canine jaws over the hard packed snow over the Yukon trails. Greens dancing in the shadows of the stars like the razor sharp grass after a heavy rain, purples richer and haughtier than the birds far, far away who wore them to find their One True Love in the deep darkness of the jungle.

The redhaired boy had murmured in the flashlight lit  
shy eyed, delicately bruised skinned  
darkness, the air of the late spring heavy like down feathers, all the colors he’d seen in his lonely, lonely nights.  
Earl had explained, and Cecil had delivered the miniature sky he had promised.

And lord above, what a sky.

The cosmos had swept themselves across the roof of their tent in every color that the wide eyed Boy Scout had held to in his own private darkness. Cecil had even added the constellations, the glimmering golden ink standing out with every pass of the flashlight’s gaze.

Cecil’s arm had absentmindedly wrapped around Earl’s bony shoulders, tanned skin warm against the thinner boy’s freckled, sunburnt skin.

They were eternal, in their self constructed heavens of one’s sight and the other’s art.

In a burst of ink and canvas, Earl Harlan fell in love.

\---------

He’d been so very patient, carrying around his secret  
like a bird’s egg  
swaddled for warmth  
in a mess of  
abandoned  
feathers.

Cecil was delicate like clothes sewn of onion skin and corn silk  
soft as rabbit fur  
wise for his age  
(and losing wisdom with every passing year).  
The honey voiced boy had galloped and leaped from stuttering awkwardness into a smoother tone of speech, his voice cracking more and more as the years passed. Cracking away like mud from a shell, chunks falling away to reveal the gem beneath.

He was laughter in the summertime storms and hushed reverence in the quiet nook the two of them had found one day, the perfect for two little boys to hide away and dream of better tomorrows.

Cecil was…

Well, he was everything a person could want.  
Everything a person would need.

But he was also Earl’s Best Friend, the only one he had, and would it /really/ be worth it to risk all that?  
Yes/No?

No, it wouldn’t be worth it. How could he risk losing Cecil’s smile when their eyes met? Or the way Cecil’s hand would gently grab his as they walked down the long road to the Harlan family trailer, the journey that Earl never wanted to end.

The grass on the side of the road was course razor sharp, dusty green bustles and strands stained from the dirt of the long, field lined road the two boys walked along. It was so horribly easy to feel like it was the road to hell, back to a place of too large hands in too small a trailer, the aluminum sides rusted and shedding like scales from a snake.

But Cecil’s slender, delicate hand in his own was a comfort unlike any other. Earl’s fears were soothed in the  
sunlit  
dusty  
togetherness

of the road home.

Cecil would always be there, patient with his Best Friend’s fears, soothing frayed nerves with a soft tone and an  
aura  
of calm in the

trembling  
shark skinned  
jagged

dwelling the Harlan family  
(a strong word for something so shattered)  
had inhabited. 

How could he not fall in love with Cecil after that?

But to speak up would be to shatter the peaceful solemnity they shared, something that he could never take back.  
(They could have lasted after that, as mature adults, but it would have been far too much to ask of mere children.)

What was left was only to wait, for a quiet Boy Scout to bide his time for when his best friend might express the desire to be something more, for when their fingers touched with something more than just friendship in mind.

He’d be there for Cecil, for better or for worse, in night and day, in starlight and sunlight.

Earl would be patient.


	3. Temperance (Carlos)

All things in moderation.  
There would only be so many times Earl could bear his teeth in a smile like a Venus fly trap, sweet and open, toothy and barely restrained, ready to snap. 

All things in moderation.  
There were only so many times he could go out for coffee with his Best Friend, his beloved Cecil, and hear about Perfect Carlos. Perfect Carlos with perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect eyes, perfect...  
(Those teeth wouldn’t be so perfect once Earl was done with him.)

All things in moderation.  
Oh, he’d love to sink his own slightly crooked teeth into Carlos’s neck, to rip and tear. Earl was ready to nearly salivate at the thought of making Carlos as ugly as he himself felt.

What had Carlos done to deserve the treasure that was Cecil?   
Had Carlos been the one in Cecil’s arms during childhood sleepovers, sharing stories with grins and wide eyes?   
No, he hadn’t. He’d grown up somewhere far away from Night Vale’s deserts and clear skies. Somewhere far from Cecil’s beautiful eyes and his bad habit of nibbling on his lip when he was nervous.   
Cecil was filled with small treasures and mannerisms like that. Cecil would always mutter the same excited greetings to every cat or dog they found when they walked together, and he made the same pun about bees each time one flew by them. It would have grown tiring if it wasn’t so endearing. 

Those encounters had happened less and less the more and more Carlos traipsed into Cecil’s life until Earl was increasingly ignored.   
Still, Earl could do little more than dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands whenever he heard Cecil’s honeyed voice begin to talk about Carlos.   
It was unbearable in the extreme. 

But this was Cecil. In the end, this was his Best Friend, and how could he ever do anything to hurt him?   
In his rational, temperate mind, Earl knew that hurting Carlos wouldn’t help him sleep easy for once, and Cecil would be devastated. Cecil would refuse to speak with him again if he ruined his chances with Carlos, likely.

If he finally snapped and broke the scientist’s neck, Roger would be disappointed in him and too embarrassed to tell anyone his last name was Harlan.  
If he finally took Carlos the Scientist by the lapels of his nicest lab coat, shook him, and told him how he didn’t deserve Cecil, would he really be any happier? 

And since when had Earl begun to ‘deserve’ Cecil, anyway? Cecil was not a prize to be won or something to covet. What made Earl so much higher and mightier than a scientist with a boyfriend, a full lab at his disposal, interns, a perfect physical form, and a PhD? 

He was no better than Carlos, not at his core. And by the lord above, was he angry. 

Anger was bile in the back of Earl’s throat,  
like mice that  
gnawed  
chewed  
and  
nibbled.

It wouldn’t help to tear someone else down to raise himself up, stepping on their neck to reach his goals. He’d be no better than his own parents then. No better than the bullies that plagued his son at school, even if his heart and motives towards Cecil were pure and kind. 

For now he’d keep his smile tight and his handshake firm whenever he saw the Scientist. He’d be better than his bloody, gory daydreams. He’d stay where he was and keep his wrath in check. He’d keep those violent fantasies in the back of his mind but never past that line. 

All things in moderation, and the self restraint will make you stronger.


	4. Compassion (Moving On)

“Do you want me to put this in a bag?”

How could Earl not daydream when he made eye contact with those big blue-green eyes that gazed at him over the counter of the deli? 

“It’s paper, not plastic, so you don’t have to feel bad about it. Less bad for the environment.”

Bob from the deli was so unlike Cecil. Cecil was all power, from his sly, purposeful voice to his less than objective radio call-outs. Bob was softer, with a mildly receding hairline, a smile like the sunlight coming through the clouds, and a casually kind attitude towards his friends and neighbors. He’d even recognized Earl at first, and the bewildered sous chef had been pleased nonetheless to catch up with what was apparently an acquaintance. He’d even asked about Roger, inquiring and kind.

They’d chatted as long as was appropriate at the deli counter while Bob rung up his small collection of groceries. 

Before leaving the deli, Earl had considered staying longer, unwilling to let the good feeling end. It felt so good to have that smile light up Bob’s face and to know he’d been remembered so well by someone he had barely met. The feeling flowed in him like dew on a morning glory, catching the light of morning as it sent it’s warm rays out to the weary world beneath it. 

It felt odd to have someone other than Cecil captivate his thoughts, and Earl had rolled the idea around in his mind that this new old friend of his was only being polite to him with his warm grin and his kind, casual words. Bob was a cashier, it was part of his job to be friendly. The back of Earl’s mind whispered to him that it was foolish for him to confuse standard kindness with flirtation or even friendship.   
Even worse, perhaps these feelings were purely selfish. Perhaps this wasn’t a schoolboy crush but a fascination with finally being wanted the way he needed to be wanted. That was unacceptable, and he’d tried to shoo away the thought from his head.

Earl knew he needed compassion towards himself and others.  
Compassion towards Roger was easy, his son was the light of his life and brought him pride like he’d never experience before. The boy had been dealt a difficult hand of cards since the start of his life, but handled such pressures with grace and courage. Earl couldn’t be more proud of his son, and wished only good things for him.

Compassion towards Cecil had slowly but surely turned into complacency instead. An acceptance, a willingness to ignore any and all faults in his beloved. The man could do no wrong in his eyes, and it was possible (only slightly) this love that he had was obscuring his foresight and hindsight. He was deaf and blind to anything but Cecil’s voice at times. 

Carlos certainly could do wrong. Compassion towards the scientist was difficult, it was hard to admit that Cecil likely wouldn’t leave him unless something drastic happened. He’d have to just get used to the idea that the love of his life was with someone else and that even if something drastic happened Cecil wasn’t guaranteed to see him as more than just a friend. Earl knew he should be happy with just friendship, but that awareness helped nothing. 

He needed to move on. 

Compassion towards himself was difficult. Did he deserve the love of his son and the affections of this deli man with those beautiful eyes? Did he deserve the life he’d built for himself? Did he deserve to have a partner who he loved and who loved him back?   
In a rational way he knew he did, but it was oh so hard to ignore the whispered doubts that often sounded more like screaming depending on the time of day or how much he’d had to drink.   
Earl had heard multiple times before that no one could love someone until that person knew how to love themselves first.   
That seemed odd and wrong to him. How could you bring down someone even further by claiming no one would love them until they loved themselves, a seemingly impossible task at times? Not everyone was gifted with self assurance or inner peace. Sometimes peace was a battle raging day in and day out, clawing and fighting to love oneself. 

It was encouraging at least that Bob from the deli seemed to like him, at least.

Earl made a mental note to go to the deli more often.


End file.
